VMware vSphere™ Provides Nearly 50 Percent Application Performance Improvement With VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
VMware DRS Enables Optimal Performance of Virtual Environments, Enabling Higher Consolidation Ratios and Lower Cost Per Application
PALO ALTO, Calif., July 8, 2009 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) – a unique feature of VMware vSphere™ 4 can boost total application performance by up to 47 percent.
VMware DRS, originally introduced with VMware Infrastructure 3 in June 2006, continuously monitors virtual machine utilization across resource pools and intelligently balances computing capacity to deliver optimal application performance and to align computing resources with business needs.
Recent lab tests were conducted with a mix of heavily- and lightly-utilized Microsoft SQL Server databases running in virtual machines on a VMware vSphere cluster with four VMware vSphere hosts. Using DRS resulted in a 47 percent higher aggregate database transaction throughput compared to an environment with no virtual machine load balancing. The results demonstrate convincingly that dynamic virtual machine load balancing is a must-have requirement, not only for greater hardware utilization through higher consolidation ratio, but also for virtualizing business critical applications.
“These tests demonstrate how VMware DRS optimizes efficiency while providing guaranteed levels of performance. This allows customers to maximize the potential of their datacenter resources, in an automated, controlled way” said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D at VMware. “VMware vSphere 4 is the only virtualization platform that includes a dynamic virtual machine load balancing capability. By optimizing resource use, DRS enables customers to achieve higher consolidation ratios, resulting in the lowest overall cost per application. DRS is one of the many features that make VMware vSphere the best choice for virtualizing all of your applications.”
When customers consolidate servers onto fewer physical hosts and there is an unexpected spike in the resource demands of the virtual machines, the total resource requirements can exceed the available resources on a host. VMware DRS provides an automated mechanism that relocates the virtual machines to hosts where resources are readily available by continuously balancing capacity and ensuring that each virtual machine has access to appropriate resources at any point in time. VMware DRS makes optimal decisions in real time, making it superior to any manual, administrator-dependent mechanism.
VMware DRS is widely used by VMware customers and has resulted in significant increases in consolidation ratios over and above the typical consolidation ratios they first realize when virtualizing without DRS; this has resulted in further reductions in their datacenter's capital and operating expenses.
“VMware DRS technology enabled Natixis to allocate and load-balance our virtualization services across our computing resources more efficiently,” said Fazil Habibulla, vice president, system engineer, at Natixis Capital Markets. “Before DRS, we ran approximately four to six virtual machines per ESX host. After implementing DRS, we almost doubled our server consolidation ratios – running eight to ten virtual machines per ESX host. Our consolidation ratio is well beyond the ROI we anticipated when starting our virtualization project back in 2004; we expect to drive these consolidation ratios even higher as we refresh our hardware to newer, more powerful systems.”
"With VMware DRS, we can confidently raise the utilization of our VMware vSphere resource pools without worrying about our end-user service level agreements. Even with heavily-utilized SQL Server virtual machines, DRS has eliminated the need for administrators to monitor CPU and memory for bottlenecks,” said Brian Doyle, network specialist for Jenner & Block LLP. “Its fully-automated resource allocation and load balancing capabilities have helped us maintain a lean and efficient IT team, and significantly reduced our datacenter's capital and operating expenses."
For more information on VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler, please visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/drs.html. To learn more about how VMware enables the lowest cost per application, visit http://www.vmware.com/technology/calculator/costperapp.html.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter—bringing cloud computing to businesses of all sizes. Customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
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VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler is a registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.